Procol Harum

Beyond
the Pale

Diane Rolph (Gary Brooker's PA) writes to BtP, 1 February
2000
I had a call from London Weekend Television Arts Dept (they make The
South Bank Show): they are preparing a new six-part prime-time
TV series on the history of rock. One of the six programmes is
entitled Rock Anthems and the producer perceives AWSoP as
the first rock anthem, so will feature it very strongly
throughout the programme. The producer feels that it inspired Bohemian
Rhapsody etc.

So, they are interviewing both Gary and Matthew (separately)
tomorrow (2 February) at a venue in south-east London (with a
Hammond) and are going to NYC to interview Keith (I think). Gary
is 11.00am, Matthew midday. Gary says he'll leave Matthew to play
the Hammond, and Matthew has decided to do it.

The programme is
calledSmash! The Story
of the British Hit Singleand it will be shown on
Sundays at 10 pm on ITV as follows:

Diane writes again, 3 February Have had interesting conversations with the producer of the
LWT programme yesterday, and MF this morning. Spoke to Gary very
briefly yesterday, who was just going out, but said, "Nice
people, nice venue, nice to see MAF, all went well".

So today I phoned the producer to follow it up. He was
absolutely delighted. Apart from Gary arriving late because of
the traffic (in LWT's car), everything went brilliantly. Gary and
Matthew were interviewed separately, but came to together for AWSoP.
Maf played it and then Gary asked if they wanted him to sing, so
he did. (The producer said it was brilliant). Maf talked a lot
about the technical side of it.

Maf thinks the technical side might be cut (not the impression
I got from the producer: after all this is the South Bank Show
team, so hopefully they'd keep in intelligent bits!)

It will be interesting to see how much they use of both
interviews. The programme will be transmitted in June, and
neither the LWT nor MF mind you using this information at BtP.

Diane writes again, June 2000

Phoned South Bank this morning. Schedulers still trying to
schedule, but I'm informed that it will now have a 'prime time'
slot in the Autumn.